Darwinism

Earlier today, I asked, why do naturalists grudgingly use the word “design”? As it happens, the problem Kirschner and Gerhart acknowledged in 2005 has been discussed elsewhere in the literature. Here are some notes I made on the subject a while back: “Evolution” is spoken of as if it were an agent, which it is—precisely—not supposed to be. Stephen Jay Gould exulted that Darwinism was a “fist as a battering ram,” [1] punching out the lights of design in life forms. Well then, consider this from New Scientist (2010): The remarkable diversity of life on Earth stands as grand testimony to the creativity of evolution. Over the course of 500 million years, natural selection has fashioned wings for flight, fins Read More ›

A friend writes to say, One of the most renowned biologists of the nineteenth century, Alfred Russel Wallace shares credit with Charles Darwin for developing the theory of evolution by natural selection. Yet one part of Wallace’s remarkable life and career has been completely ignored: His embrace of intelligent design. Darwin’s Heretic is a 21-minute documentary that explores Wallace’s fascinating intellectual journey and how it sheds light on current debates. The documentary features University of Alabama at Birmingham Professor Michael Flannery, author of the acclaimed biography, Alfred Russel Wallace: A Rediscovered Life: For years Alfred Russel Wallace was little more than an obscure adjunct to Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution. Remembered only for prompting Darwin to write On the Origin Read More ›

Further to Lee Spetner’s comments on the (correct) wiring of the vertebrate eye* (sometimes used as a claim for “poor design”), over at Creation-Evolution Headlines, there are some recent articles on the subject, with lots of links: Two Evolutionary Evidences Debunked (7/23/14) This evolutionary argument began to unravel in 2007 when researchers found that Müller cells, penetrating the thicket of blood vessels in the human retina, actually provide near-ideal vision by acting as wave guides to the individual photoreceptors—providing better performance than could be had if the rods and cones were in front of the blood vessels (see 5/02/2007 and subsequent research reported 5/07/2010 about additional vision enhancements provided by the Müller cells) and Backward Wiring of Eye Retina Confirmed Read More ›

Hey, ‘tis the season to exchange gifts, so give it to every friend who has ever wondered why you think there is more to know about evolution than the Darwin-in-the-schools lobby wants the world to know: Major scientists from a dozen countries present evidence that a paradigm shift is underway or has already taken place, replacing neo-Darwinism (the standard model of evolution based on natural selection following the accumulation of random genetic mutations) with a vastly richer evolutionary synthesis than previously thought possible. Regular readers may recall that I (O’Leary for News) have long admired Suzan Mazur, a journalist with good credentials in name media, who could have done much better for herself, had she just joined in on the Read More ›

As just noted, a discussion thread on responding to abuse of the privilege of developing and implementing curriculum has been trollishly hijacked in what looks like an escalation of the tactics coming from a circle of objector sites. At the end, on a topic dealing with 12 year olds, sexually tinged vulgarity has been injected by word plays on a participant’s handle in an attempt to trigger a spiral to the gutter. That is the sort of ruthless nihilistic amorality and domineering disrespect we have been seeing in answer to exposure and correction of patent education abuse — of 12 year olds in Critical Thinking class . . . as in: pretending and trying to enforce under colour of education Read More ›

I headline as a notice, to deal with trollish misconduct: >>I warned about hijacking threads of discussion, took time to give pointers of correction and even link where there are discussions of this sort of sophomoric parody, e.g. http://www.truefreethinker.com…..l-part-2-4 (as in: this sort of foolishness has long since been corrected, that which is made of parts is essentially composite thus contingent and cannot be a necessary being [a major feature of the idea of God in relevant Systematic Theology and Philosophy of Religion, both significant academic disciplines that the mocking objectors were pointed to but willfully ignored showing malicious threadjacking intent and incorrigibility in the face of an important issue on the table], and to try to redefine components as Read More ›

From The Atlantic: The strangeness of the geology and fossil evidence behind the theory of continental drift helped drive a half-century of resistance to the idea. Siddhartha Mukherjee documented in his book The Emperor of All Maladies how a fixation on the cure for a misconceived disease inhibited recognition of the complexity of cancer for a generation. It took decades before physicists came to grips with experiments that showed that the speed of light was constant for every observer—and even then, only the very young Einstein took that observation seriously enough to produce his first relativity theory. In the long run, it’s true: Reality imposes a final and authoritative judgment on the rights and wrongs of any idea. In the Read More ›

We usually end our religion coverage with the new atheists, but I’m in a rush this morning, and this is easy, so … via Jerry Coyne’s blog, here: I reported earlier (see here and here), that the Templeton World Charity Foundation (TWCF), as well as two seemingly reputable philosophical societies (the Analysis Trust and the Aristotelian Society), are sponsoring a conference in Oxford next March on “The Metaphysics of the Trinity: New Directions“. … The philosopher and atheist Anthony Grayling, Master of the New College of the Humanities and a supernumerary fellow at Oxford, didn’t like this conference at all, and expressed his displeasure. More. Of course, the Trinity is a philosophical concept, whether a self-satisfied ignoramus chooses to understand Read More ›

In “Why Darwinism is failing,” I noted that genome mapping changed the way we look at evolution: We are now much closer to the world of mechanism, not theory—closer to Popular Mechanics than to Philosophical Quarterly. The “single greatest idea anyone ever had” gives way to descriptions of mechanisms few expected or predicted—each of which might account for some evolution, though most of the picture is still missing. Darwin’s defenders, apart from endless terminology quibbles, respond by insisting that natural selection acting on random mutation (Darwinism) can find room for all of it somehow. They seem not to have noticed that all useful theories are bounded. A theory that explains everything explains nothing. By contrast, no one claims that horizontal gene transfer Read More ›

Further to Barry Arrington’s post, “Zachriel goes into insane denial mode,” which has garnered so far 170 comments, and doubtless counting: The biggest problem for Darwin’s supporters (paleo, neo, extended, whatever) today has nothing to do with Uncommon Descent or with any design hypothesis. The problem is genome mapping. Blame people like Francis Collins and Craig Venter. Darwinian evolution was always a theory, by which Darwinism (natural selection acting on random mutation generates huge levels of information, not noise) . It was the single greatest idea anyone ever had, and could be believed without evidence because “Darwinism is the only known theory that is in principle capable of explaining certain aspects of life.” (p. 287, Blind Watchmaker, 1986) And it has Read More ›

And that is what is killing it. From Yahoo News: Women’s rights, the foundations of capitalism and the warping of space-time can all take a backseat to meticulous descriptions of long-beaked finches, at least if public opinion is any measure. “On the Origin of Species,” Charles Darwin’s famous tome on evolution, has been voted the most influential academic book in history, according to an online survey answered by the public. The biology bombshell edged out competitors such as “The Complete Works of William Shakespeare”; “On the Vindication of the Rights of Women,” by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley; “The Wealth of Nations,” by Adam Smith; and even physics classics such as the theory of general relativity by Albert Einstein and “A Brief Read More ›

Leah Libresco, here, including: Both my parents don’t believe in God, so I was raised as an atheist. We had a Christmas tree, but my parents were definitely upfront about the fact that they thought religions weren’t true. I was the kid in high school who worked to get us to stop doing a toy drive for Samaritan’s Purse (which uses the toys to evangelize to poor children). And, post-conversion, I still think that’s a wildly inappropriate charity for a public school to partner with. I grew up on Long Island, where the vast majority of my classmates were secular Jews, so between that and my family, I thought of religion as something that was not only wrong, but wrong Read More ›

We’ve followed the adventures of the Pastafarians with some interest because of the strange turns they take. Originally a concept invented by new atheists to mock the growing evidence against Darwinism as their creation story, pastafarianism has seemingly morphed into ridicule of actual religions by insisting on getting one’s face on a driver’s licence while wearing a spaghetti strainer. And so now, from Masachusetts: The Mass. Registry of Motor Vehicles is allowing a Pastafarian woman to wear a colander in her driver’s license picture. This comes after The American Humanist Association’s Appignani Humanist Legal Center’s attorneys were enlisted to assist with the woman’s appeal after she was denied the right to wear it in her license photo by the RMV. Read More ›

Further to johnnyb’s “Intelligent Design Creationism” as a Label”: The word salad “cdesign proponentsists” was cited as evidence of something  in comments 4 and 40. For readers confused by “cdesign proponentsists’” here’s the widely circulated story from an atheist blog at Patheos: Pandas, it turns out, went through several editions: in its first (1983) edition, it was titled Creation Biology, then renamed in 1986 to Biology and Creation, then renamed again in 1987 to Biology and Origins, finally becoming Of Pandas and People. The plaintiffs subpoenaed the book’s publisher, the Foundation for Thought and Ethics, to obtain these prior drafts, and found something amazing. The earlier drafts, as you might expect from the titles, made repeated references to creationism. But Read More ›

It almost feels like researchers think it is okay now to just doubt Darwin. It seems, we’re a long way from the “Darwin himself said” rubbish that used to deface media releases even a few years ago.* From ScienceDaily: A key concept in Darwin’s theory of evolution which suggests nature favors larger females that can produce greater numbers of off-spring must be redefined according to scientists behind ground-breaking new research. The study, published in the scientific journal Biological Reviews, concludes that the theory of ‘fecundity selection’ — one of Charles Darwin’s three main evolutionary principles, also known as ‘fertility selection’ — should be redefined so that it no longer rests on the idea that more fertile females are more successful Read More ›